That’s pretty simple so far, right? Where it can get a little confusing is when the note in front of the number isn’t a quarter beat. If I were to play eighth notes along with this quarter note beat, there would be two notes for every tick – like this. So if I were to play quarter notes with this beat, the keys I press would match the ticking, like so. Each of these ticks represents a quarter note beat. The quarter note in front of it is simply saying that there are 60 quarter-note beats per minute in this particular piece. So if a piece is marked “60 BPM”, it means it’s as fast as a clock ticks (60 beats per minute). This number tells you how many beats per minute a piece is. This is really simple – Justin B correctly assumed it’s the metronome number. Let’s start by talking about what the number means.

Here in North America, we use the words “quarter note” and “half note”, but in Britain and elsewhere, they use “crotchet” and “minim”. Just to clarify, a crotchet is a quarter note, and a minim is a half note – the words we use for these notes depend on region. If you’ve ever been confused by random Italian in your music like allegro, or aren’t sure what the quarter notes, half notes and so on before the number means, then keep watching! ? It’s a pretty straightforward answer so this won’t be a hugely long video, but it’s an important topic that I’ve yet to discuss on this channel. In today’s video, we’re going to answer a question about tempo markings in music.

Metronome 60 bpm